Motor vehicles are conventionally equipped with seating systems for seating a driver and one or more passengers. The seating systems are designed to provide optimal comfort and convenience for the seated passengers. For example, seating systems are known to include various combinations of bench seats for seating two or more occupants, and captain chairs for seating individual occupants. In the front of the vehicle, the seats are traditionally mounted on one or more seat adjusters. In the rear of the vehicle, the seats are traditionally fixed in place without seat adjusters.
Pivoting armrests are often mounted on the seats to enhance occupant comfort. In some cases, the pivoting armrest can provide all or part of the seat back for the center seat occupant.
Motor vehicles are also equipped with occupant restraint systems including seatbelts and airbags. In some cases, an occupant restraint system includes an airbag mounted on the inboard side of a seat, such as the driver-side seat, and will deploy to restrain the occupant.
It would be desirable to provide a method for improving the deployment of the seat mounted airbag in those situations where the vehicle seating system includes both a pivoting armrest and an adjacent airbag mounted on the same side of the occupant seating position, such that the position of the armrest affects the deployment of the airbag.